Night never truly arrived in the Faelands, and neither did day. The forest shifted between gold hued dawn and silver twilight. It was impossible to tell what time it was let alone what day it was. The hours ticked by slowly. During the golden hours they did little. It was a strange feeling, having nothing to do. Back home, even on his days off there was at least something to do around the house or in the fields. During the silver hours that passed for night they ate and drank and talked. The Faerunners were plenty friendly but Tallis couldn't help but feel like an outsider. Setia and Valerie had the kind of bond that only came from years spent together on the road, and even though he claimed he was a new addition, Callan fit well with them. Jokes passed easily between them and silences were never awkward.

Tallis hated to admit it but he was a little jealous.

On the fifth or sixth day, Callan came to collect him. It was finally time to get on the road.

Callan was leading through a weather beaten notebook with yellowed pages and a leather cover bleached by salt and sun. Tallis liked to think in a past life it had belonged to a sea captain or an adventurer. Seeing it with Callan left him mortified, and he cringed against a rising tide of prickling,  self-conscious nervousness.

"These are quite good," said Callan. "Where did you learn?"

Tallis stood and plucked the book out of his hands. It was open to a landscape he had sketched the other day. It was no good, really. Just a doodle.

"I had to take art classes in school. They were mandatory. I'm really not any good though, not compared to everyone else."

"Your classmates must be true masters, rivals to any of the classical artists in the old world. I'm a little jealous, I must admit, I never had the opportunity to draw in school. My classes were all about writing and rhetoric and poetry. Stuffy boring subjects if you ask me."

"I thought you were a fighter." Tallis closed the book and slid it into his front pocket. "What good are those classes to someone who travels between town shooting things for a living."

"When your people trade in stories and secrets it pays to be able to speak well, and more often than not a sharp tongue ends battles faster than a sharp blade." He paused for a moment, staring off into the trees. “We’ll have to wait a while longer before heading into the city. Aragam’s health is failing and we’re running out of medicine.” He wiped away a stray smear of the green poultice slathered over his face and studied the paste left on his fingers. “It is powerful magic. Old magic, but I do not think we have enough to save him. Setia and I are leaving to find more. We may be gone a few days.”

“Take me with you,” said Tallis. A hot surge of fear and guilt roared through him. “Aragam wouldn’t have gotten hurt if not for me. This is all my fault. I should help.”

“You don’t need to if you don’t want to,” said Callan placing a hand on Tallis’ shoulder. “We all knew the risks. We all knew that any job could be our last. It’s okay to forgive yourself because something bad happened.”

A small bit of the weight lifted from Tallis’ heart. “I know. But I still want to help.”

Callan smiled. “I didn’t want to make you feel pressured into coming with us, but where we’re going, we could use the extra gun. Go get your weapons, bullets, some food for a few day's travel, and meet me back here.”

Tallis swallowed past the lump of dread sitting in his throat and ran back to camp, collecting the supplies he could from the tree cottages they’d been staying in and a wagon that Valerie had brought into camp yesterday. He had no idea where it had come from but every crate in it had ‘property of Cold Iron Detective Agency’ branded on the side. He was sure the agency was not happy, and that made him smile. The only thing they hadn’t been able to borrow or steal were fresh clothes. He’d done his best to wash his in a stream but his shirt still stank faintly of sweat and the back of it was stained red with Aragam’s blood.

Blood that he had spilled helping Edward escape the detectives.

In spite of what Callan said, a debt was owed, and Tallis couldn’t imagine what he would do if Aragam died. With a deep breath, he locked his fear away, belted on his gun and trotted back to find Callan. The Greater Fae was busy hitching a small cart to Phaethon, and Setia was rubbing a cloth over her revolver, polishing the surface to a mirror shine.

Callan patted the side of the cart. “You can throw your extra stuff in here. Phaethon won’t mind pulling a little extra weight, will you boy?”

The forest-horse snorted.

“That’s right,” said Callan, stepping away from the cart to pat Phaethon on the nose. “You are a big strong boy.”

Setai holstered her pistol with a grunt. “Do you have to coddle that horse so much?”

The comment only made Callan pat the horse harder. “I do. Yes, I do.”

Phaethon snorted again and shook out his mane. He looked like he was loving the attention.

“It helps,” said Callan. “Horses need affection and care too.”

Setia shook her head and walked towards the treeline. “Well, all right. Whatever you do with your horse behind closed doors isn’t my business.”   

Callan let out a small chuckle and finished tightening the straps around Phaethon's belly. "Okay, boy, let's go."

Tallis nodded, double checked he had his gun on him, and started off after Setia before he realized that Callan had been talking to the horse.

"You bring the right bullets?" Setia asked.

"Oh damn," said Tallis. He plucked a round out of his belt. "How do I tell?"

She swiped the bullet away from him. "It's right here. Stamped onto the bottom. You got lucky. These are the right ones."

They left the long trailing branches of the cottage willows behind and pushed deeper into the forest. The trees grew closer and the branches overhead wove together, casting the forest floor in grey gloom speared through with shafts of gold. The further they walked away from the camp the more the shadows lengthened and dark shapes flitted between the trees. Tallis walked with one hand resting on the butt of his gun, ready for the moment another Pinewatcher fell from the trees, or a giant stepped out of the shadows, or even the moment common bandits jumped from the shadows to rob them. There were Fae bandits weren’t there? He was sure he’d read that in a story once.

By what Tallis guessed was late afternoon, Callan ordered them to a stop next to a bubbling brook and unharnessed Phaethon. The horse nuzzled its snout into him and bent to drink from the stream.

“We should stop here for the day, find some food and rest for the night.” Callan shot Tallis a stony glance. “You are making me very nervous today.”

Tallis blinked in shock for a moment, fumbling for words. “Me? Why?”

“You’ve been wandering around all day like you’re expecting to doom to sweep down upon us at any second. You have me worried, and I keep asking myself if you know something that I don’t. So, what do you see that bothers you so much?”

“Nothing,” said Tallis. “I see nothing and that’s what bothers me.”

Setia gave him a sideways look and drew her gun. “I’m going to give the perimeter a quick once over if we’re going to stop a while. Couldn’t hurt right?”

Callan took a burlap sack out of the cart, and handed a Tallis thick crusted roll. When he spoke he kept his voice soft and low. “What do you mean?”

Tallis shrugged, not wanting to say anything.

Callan reached out and gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “Tallis, I’m here to listen, and I’m here to help if you need it.”

He pulled out of the warrior’s grasp. “I know.” His voice held more heat than he’d meant it to. “I know. I just don’t want to talk about it.”

“It’s okay to say you need help. We all do every now and then. If the load you’re putting on yourself gets too heavy, I want you to know that you can always lean on me. You can always share that burden. I have very broad shoulders, Tallis. I can take the extra weight.”

He let out a long sigh, and felt his shoulders slump, bending under the tons of dread he was holding. “I just don’t know if you’d understand.”

“I can’t promise that I will, but I know that putting the weight down and talking about it helps more than you think it would.”

Setia found her way back to the cart and unbuckled her gun belt, setting it down. “Everything is quiet out there,” she said. “It’s safe.”

Tallis let out a breath, and felt another small weight lift from the burden. Safe for now would have to do until they were back to the cabins, or better yet back in the normal world. 

Setia traded her pistol for a short, recurved bow. “Could you help me with something, Tallis.”

He stood, shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t know how much help I’ll be. I don’t know how to shoot a bow.”

She fished a small leatherbound book out of the cart. “Leave shooting to me. It’s what I’m good at. And I have a job that’s more suited to you.” She tossed him the book.

He caught it and leafed through the pages. It was filled with sketches of plants, flowers, and fruits with a footnote on each page describing the flora. Some were edible, some were medicinal, a shocking amount were poisonous. “Did you draw these?” he asked.

“You’re not the only artist on the team,” she said with a shrug. “Think you could look at that and pick us something that won’t kill us? Seems like the kind of information driven book work you’d be good at.”

He nodded. One more job. No matter how many you took off the list there was always one more job. Without another word, Setia picked an empty burlap sack out of the cart and stepped into the woods, sliding between the trees with the lithe economy of motion of a mountain cat. There was a feral intensity to each silent step, and something wolfish and hungry in her smile. Right at that moment she wasn’t a woman, she wasn’t human, she was a predator. Tallis was glad she was on their side. Even with a tiny bow, he was sure she could take down anything foolish enough to come after them. The underbrush in the forest grew thicker here. Nests of vines tangled around the bases of the trees and bushes heavy with thorns crowded worn game trails. He did his best to keep up with Setia, trying to move just as quietly as she was, but he could either be quick or be silent, not both. Reaching between grasping thorns, Tallis held up a branch with one hand while holding the sketchbook open with the other. He leafed through a few pages before finding the berry that matched the ones hanging between the thorns. The footnote on that page read “you can eat these but you’ll be in for a very bad time. Harmless for Fae creatures, brings on fever dreams and waking nightmares in humans.”

He let the branch go and carefully withdrew his hands from the mess of thorns. When he looked up, terror gripped him for the span of a heartbeat, he was alone among the shadows and the trees, but then he spotted a flicker of dull brown stepping between the trees. Setia turned and waved at him. He let out a breath. Far away, but still there, keeping him safe for now. He moved to the next plant, looking it over and comparing it to the picture in the sketchbook. Poison. Definitely not what they were looking for. It didn’t take him to fall into the mechanical rhythm of finding the next plant, comparing it to the book, checking the notes. Setia had been right, it was just the kind of bookwork he was well suited to. It wasn’t much different from cataloguing crystals back at the office. The process was mostly the same, looking for similarities in size, pattern, colour, comparing that to documentation. The only difference here was he didn’t have to hunt for the right storage drawer to slot the gem into when he found out what kind of energy was stored inside and how dangerous it was. The world narrowed as he worked. The shifting shadows fell away, the looming spectre of danger fled, and everything faded away, leaving only the twisting patterns of vines and leaves, the colour of the berries, the sharp smell of sap.      

The sack filled slowly at first with handfuls of red things no bigger than his thumb that gave off a sharp burning scent that made his eyes water. The book said they were edible but who would want to eat something like that was a mystery. He slipped one into his front pocket. The book said they were good. Maybe if he was feeling brave, he’d try one. As the slanting spears of dawn-gold light faded, the foraging suddenly became much easier. A storm of bioluminescence flickered to life in the twilight, trees blazed with nodules of starlight, mushrooms flickered orange in the darkness. With the world lit up around him, he darted forward and plucked a spongy fungal growth from the forest floor. According to the book, the ones that glowed yellow were good to eat. He scooped a handful into the bag. Moss that sparked with flickers of electricity was fine too, provided you could get it without taking too much of a jolt. Tallis squared up to a tree plastered with a thick coat of the stuff and watched as a crackling arc rolled around the trunk, spreading upwards and questing for the leaves. There was a brief window of silence before the next arc started. The crackling light hit the higher branches of the trees and burst with a snap, Tallis dahed closer, gripped the moss with both hands and pulled. It didn’t budge. Gritting his teeth he threw his weight into it and the moss let loose with a soft ripping sound. He fell back on his ass and an arc of blue light snapped up from the base of the tree, searching for the chunk of vegetation that was sitting in his hands now.

He let out a shout, whooping in triumph as he stuffed the moss into the sack. Something crashed through the brush ahead of him, moving heedlessly, breaking branches and sending clouds of sleeping birds fleeing from it as it ran. The triumph he felt died, and a sick yellow fear grew in its place.  He drew his gun. It was heavy but there was nothing comforting in the weight. It wobbled in his grip and his doubts multiplied by the second. If something was coming for him, his hands weren’t steady enough to get off a clean shot.

With one final crash, the thing broke through the underbrush and skidded to a stop. He raised the gun. The thing raised a bow.

“Whoa,” said Setia. “Easy. It’s just me.” She stepped out of the shadows and into a pool of soft blue light. “I thought you were hurt and came running.”

“Sorry!” Tallis said, jamming the gun back into it’s holster. “I just heard something running and thought it was trouble.”

She lowered the bow. “I’m just glad you’re okay. But what were you shouting about?”

He picked up the sack and held it open to her. “Food. I filled the bag.”

“Okay,” she laughed. “I’m glad you had better luck than I did." She gave him a small smile. "I know you feel out of your depth. But, believe me, you're better suited to this than you think. It takes all kinds to make the guild run. Come on, we should head back, see how Callan is doing.”

They walked back to camp and found Callan sitting in front of a crackling fire with a large sheet of paper and a stick of charcoal. He held the page up towards them, showing off a rough map. "I did a little scouting ahead while you were out and I like what I see. We'll have an easy road tomorrow."

Setia fetched a set of pans from the cart and a packet of bacon. She up the pans over the fire and started rifling through the sack of foraged vegetables.

Tallis took her fork away from her. "Why don't you leave the cooking to the experts? If we need something shot you can handle it."

"Fine," she said letting go of the fork. "Just be careful with those red peppers you picked. Delicate little thing like you, they'd tear your head off."

He threw a handful of ingredients into the pan. "Do we have any other meat than this bacon?" Bacon was good for sure, but it didn't have the exact flavor he was looking for.

"Sorry," said Setia. "Next time we rob a wagon we'll make sure we get your dinner order first so we can steal the right thing."

"All right, all right," said Tallis. "I understand we can't be too choosy. I was just asking."

Callan rolled his eyes but smiled. "Now I know why Aragam likes you. You sound a lot like him, but, I'll let you in on a secret, no one cares like you do. If you heat up mud on a plate for me, I'll eat it."

The food came together and in the end it tasted fine, not but fine, although a somber mood hung over the meal like a dark cloud.

Setia broke the silence. "You think the ol' guy will pull through?"

"I'm not sure," said Callan around a mouthful of meat. "But I have hope. I haven't known Aragam that long but from what I've seen, I would say he's stronger than he looks."

Setia finished her plate and took a long sip from a flask. "I'll drink to that." She passed the flask to Callan. "You should have seen him when he first showed up. All fancy clothes, and posh accent, better in a kitchen than he is in a fight. But when the pressure is on there aren't many people I'd rather have beside me."

Callan smiled and passed the flask to Tallis. "He reminds me of someone else I know."

Tallis took the flask and drank down the rest of the contents. The liquor was rich with notes of caramel, molasses, and vanilla. It was a far cry from the coffin varnish he usually drank. He leaned back on the grass and folded his arms behind his head. Life certainly hadn't taken the path he thought it would, but they had food, a fire, and the promise of an easy road tomorrow. That was the best he could ask for.